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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014561">after dark</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_button/pseuds/kate_button'>kate_button</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stranger Things (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>First Kiss, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 03, Sharing a Bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:09:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,089</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014561</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_button/pseuds/kate_button</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy comes back different.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>271</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>after dark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>look, taylor swift wrote an album and i wrote a fic and that's really all there is to it</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Billy comes back different. He’s so obviously and profoundly different when he first comes back that it almost eclipses the real ways, the deep, aching, chasmic ways. His hair is short and shaggy and so, so curly and Steve had never thought that that was real, Billy’s curls. Never gave much thought to anything about Billy being real. He’s skinny, now, skinny and soft and white in a way Steve’s never seen, gold all leached out so the blue veins in his wrists and the pink scars on his arms stand vivid, unreal, vibrant. There’s no grin. Steve thinks about Billy’s face <em>before</em>, thinks about his white teeth red with blood, thinks about the lazy way he bared them. Like he was untouchable. Like he knew something the world didn’t, a secret. Even when Billy was furious he was grinning, electric, a little wild and so compelling Steve ended up caught in his orbit before he'd even noticed the tug of his gravity. </p>
<p>Billy smiles, sometimes, now. Rarely, and never loudly, and Steve keeps each one he catches close to his chest. </p>
<p>Steve didn’t live with Billy in the before, but he doesn’t imagine that he was the type to knock gently on a bedroom door and wait for permission before turning the knob. For instance. Imagines Billy was the type to knock twice, loud and careless, before barging in at two am without waiting for a response. If he bothered to knock at all. </p>
<p>‘Yeah?’ </p>
<p>‘Sorry,’ Billy says first, even as the door is still creaking open, ‘I, uh.’</p>
<p>Billy didn’t apologize, before. Didn’t duck his head when he asked for things.</p>
<p>Didn’t ask for things. </p>
<p>‘What is it?’ Steve asks, tries to say it soft and easy like a breath. Billy spooks easy sometimes. Seems like it might be a night where the glue keeping the cracked pieces together is particularly fragile. </p>
<p>Billy stands in his doorway and wraps his arms tighter around himself and takes a shuddering breath that Steve can hear from his bed and doesn’t answer. Steve pushes himself up, scoots himself over, and turns down the corner of his comforter. </p>
<p>It’s been months, now, and Steve’s still not sure how deep the trenches go, what all there is to find in the unexplored places where no light reaches and the pressure is enough to crush bone. The Billy that knocks on his door sometimes at night isn’t the same Billy that kicked the shit out of him at Jonathan Byers’ house. Everything is different. </p>
<p>Billy looks up at him, pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, then steps into the room and shuts the door behind him quietly. ‘Sorry,’ he says again, but sits down on the bed without much hesitation. </p>
<p>‘Wish you’d stop doing that.’ Steve came back different too, he thinks. He wants to put his arm around Billy, pull him in until Billy’s half on top of him, until he can feel the rise and fall of Billy’s chest against his side, but he doesn't. Billy isn't his to touch. Sometimes he just needs the heat of another body next to his. </p>
<p>Billy’s all locked up next to him, tense in a way that bleeds out into the space between them, seems to affect the air around them. </p>
<p>‘You don’t have to apologize, I mean,’ Steve says, leaned back against the wall. He puts one hand on top of the blanket between them, palm turned conspicuously upward. </p>
<p>Two-am post-nightmare-flashback-panic-attack Billy is different than daylight Billy. Daylight Billy has started giving him shit again. Daylight Billy cooks, and bakes, and reads non-fiction while he smokes cigarettes out the kitchen window every morning while he’s drinking his coffee. Daylight Billy says shit like <em>Betcha they’ve really got aliens out there in New Mexico, bastards. You think we could get ourselves in there? We should go. I wanna meet ET. </em>And Steve says <em>Haven’t you had enough shady government facilities for one lifetime? </em>And Billy rolls his eyes at him and drags his smoke and says <em>Could tolerate one more for fucking </em>aliens, <em>Harrington. </em>Daylight Billy says shit like <em>Fuck Reagan, are you registered to vote? </em></p>
<p>Daylight Billy smiles, sometimes.</p>
<p>Two-am post-nightmare-flashback-panic-attack Billy looks over at him in the dark and then looks down at his hand on the covers between them and then sighs and pushes a hand through his hair. ‘Did I wake you up?’</p>
<p>‘No,’ Steve says and Billy finally tucks his legs under Steve’s covers and leans back against the wall next to him, slouched down.</p>
<p>Billy nods. Looks at Steve’s hand again. Steve watches him look at it.</p>
<p>They’re both different. Some days every little sound makes Steve want to fucking scream, nerves itching and restless. Some days he paces and smokes and paces and sits with his knee bouncing until he can’t stand it and he feels like he wants to tear his skin off. Some days Steve spends the day curled up in bed staring blankly at the wall and doesn’t feel anything and doesn’t think anything and doesn’t notice when the light through the blinds starts to wane, doesn’t notice anything until Billy or Robin open his door and put a cup of water and a sandwich on his night stand, maybe a hand on his shoulder, in his hair.</p>
<p>It’s just been a rough couple years. Too much, sometimes. On the bad days.</p>
<p>Billy’s fingertips land on his wrist, skate down over his palm. It tickles, and it gives him goosebumps. He looks from Billy’s face down to their hands, watches as Billy’s fingers slot between his, curl down and lock together. Steve rubs a light circle with his thumb. Billy sighs and settles in a little closer, relaxes a little. </p>
<p>‘Nightmare?’ Steve asks, and Billy nods. His eyes are closed now. Steve looks, cheeks heating a little in the dark. Billy’s so-</p>
<p>‘The worst part is sometimes I’m like… kind of awake? But I can’t move and I can’t quite shake it and it’s like it’s happening all over again.' Steve squeezes Billy’s hand. Billy shifts down a little. ‘I was always cold, though. Then.' He cracks his eyes open and slants a look at Steve in the dark, picks up their joined hands between them. 'This helps. Even though your hands are always clammy.'</p>
<p>Maybe he’s not different. Maybe this Billy is the real Billy, the one that lived in the thick inky blackness, the one that Billy kept there, that he curled around and shielded and kept safe and protected and held onto through it all. Maybe Billy's been hiding little pieces of himself to keep them safe for a long time.</p>
<p>Billy shuts his eyes again, tips his head back against the wall.</p>
<p>He smiles, a little. Steve feels lucky. Feels favored, feels like when a butterfly lands on freckled shoulders in the heat of the summer or a stray cat slinks skeptical from it's den to do figure eights around strange legs. Feels chosen, or something.</p>
<p>'Hey,' he says, quiet, because Billy's breathing is starting to even out and slow down now. Billy's thumb skates up his by way of answer. 'I don't mind when you wake me up.'</p>
<p>Billy doesn't say anything, but he gives Steve's hand a squeeze. His leg shifts under the blanket until his knee is touching Steve's.</p>
<p>He doesn't know what it is between them. The fact of the matter is that he would be happy for Billy to wake him up in the middle of the night every night for the rest of his life. He'd hold Billy's hand in the daytime, too, if Billy wanted him to. </p>
<p>Billy scoots down until his head is on Steve's pillow, curls up on his side and looks up at Steve and says 'Come down here.'</p>
<p>So Steve scoots down and Billy watches him the whole time and Steve's heart is kinda stumbling too quick and Billy's still holding his hand and when he settles their faces are so close together that he can feel Billy's breath and for a second it overwhelms him, makes him close his eyes and cling to Billy's hand like it's the only thing keeping him from drowning and maybe it's the way that nothing else exists when they're like this, the two of them alone and warm and safe on the island of his bed, here and alive and solid, clammy hands and nightmares and sleep breath and all of it.</p>
<p>He hears Billy's throat click as he swallows, hears him lick his lips, and a little ember flares in his guts.</p>
<p>'I wouldn't mind if you woke me up either,' Billy breathes, and the ember flares bright and hot.</p>
<p>Steve wonders if Billy can hear how ragged his breath feels, and he tucks his face into the pillow to hide it, to hide from it, but then Billy's fingers are on his temple and there's no hiding the cracked little noise that comes from his throat.</p>
<p>'Steve,' Billy says, and Steve unburies his face and Billy doesn't say anything else, but Billy's foot tucks itself between Steve's ankles under the blankets and the fingers that touched his temple skate down his arm until they find his waist and Steve shudders when Billy's hand settles in the soft place above his hip bone, tucked up under the hem of his sweatshirt so the impossible heat of it burns his bare skin like a brand.</p>
<p>He brushes a lock of hair back out of Billy's face and Billy tips his face toward the touch and says '<em>fuck</em>', ragged and shaken and Steve feels the world sway under him like a ship deck, feels his insides roll as he gets his sea legs in this new reality, too much in the scrape of Billy's voice and the way his body can feel Billy's like a magnet to ignore what's hanging there in the humid air between them.</p>
<p>There's nothing to think about, nothing to dwell on or debate. There's no question here, only an inevitability. </p>
<p>He likes his bed better with Billy in it. He likes his body better with Billy touching it.</p>
<p>Billy's looking at him when Steve finally looks back at his face and Billy keeps looking while Steve brings their hands up and presses his lips to Billy's knuckles and Steve sees the way it makes his eyebrows crinkle and his eyes slip shut and his lips part and he wonders who the last person was that kissed Billy's knuckles, wonders who last tucked his hair behind his ear, who last pressed their forehead to his on the same pillow, just a breath apart. Billy's fingers press into his side and Steve wonders if Billy's in uncharted waters here too.</p>
<p>He thinks he wouldn't mind being lost at sea with Billy. </p>
<p>'God,' Billy says, shaky, and then, 'are you sure?'</p>
<p>He doesn't know how long he's wanted Billy, doesn't know if want is really the word for it, but he knows he doesn't want to let go of Billy's hand, never wants to let go, feels the loss of it every time he has to. Feels the emptiness next to him whenever Billy isn't there to fill it. A void in the shape of him whenever he's not around.</p>
<p>He knows he keeps every single smile he gets out of Billy, covets it more than gold or diamonds. He knows he needs to taste Billy's mouth, knows he wants to kiss every single one of Billy's scars until they smooth and fade into the landscape of him. </p>
<p>He's not sure of many things, but Billy, with all his scars and all his dark places and all his silent chasms, Billy he's sure of.</p>
<p>'I'm sure,' Steve says, steady on his feet, 'are you?' </p>
<p>'Yes,' Billy says, too quickly, a rush of breath and the press of his fingers into Steve's side, crush of his hand in Steve's, 'god, yes.'</p>
<p>The press of Billy's lips steals his breath. It doesn't last long, but Billy breaks away looking so alive and so sure and Steve thinks his chest might crack right open for him. </p>
<p>When the sun rises Billy is still there, heavy and warm and cutting off the circulation to Steve's arm, damp spot on Steve's sweatshirt from his breath or his drool, hair tickling Steve's cheek and his chin and his neck and Steve can't stop himself, has to put his fingers in it, bury his fingers in the curls until Billy wakes up, sleepy grin on his mouth.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://un-buttoned.tumblr.com/">i'm still on tumblr</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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